I could go where I was originally going, to get an audience with Santa Muerte, whoever she is now, but I really don’t want to. Asking favors of gods and spirits hasn’t really worked out for me lately, and the last thing I want is to find myself in debt again.

I pull a tracking charm from my messenger bag, a small hematite pyramid carved with runes and hanging from a string. I used this in Mexico a few times. I don’t know if it’ll work, but what it does should at least give me a better idea of what I’m up against. Quetzalcoatl might have a lock on questions about the murders so everything points back to me, but how well is he hiding her? Does he know that I know about her?

If the charm can find her it will lift toward the direction she’s in. If it doesn’t, it won’t do anything. If she’s being shielded and it can’t get a bead on her, it’ll spin in slow circles.

I dangle it from the string and concentrate on Sastre. At first nothing, then it begins to slowly spin. Okay. That’s good to know. He’s got her protected from scrying.

The pyramid spins faster, cranking up the speed until it’s a blur at the end of the string. It starts to glow red and the string catches fire. I open the driver’s side door, almost slamming into a truck speeding by, and toss it out, where it goes up like a Roman candle.

Okay. That didn’t work. She’s got warding guarding her that’s more powerful than the charm. Honestly not that tough. It’s a pretty weak charm.

But that means I need some major mojo to punch through Q’s tampering enough that I can get some useful information. I think I know where I might find something like that.

When my parents died, they left my sister and I property that neither one of us had ever heard of. I was gone just after the bodies were in the ground, and didn’t find out about any of it until I got back from Mictlan. With my sister dead, everything came to me. Some houses, a piece of property in the Mojave that I haven’t seen yet, storage units dotted across the Southland, and a ledger detailing everything in them. The ledger is a large leather-bound book filled with pages and pages of listings that read like a junkyard inventory in a Harry Potter fanfic.